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Summer 2024

History

Hanford history
Spring 2016

Hanford’s past

Floating, glowing letters greet a group of high school seniors as the doors slide open: “Welcome to the Hanford History Museum, Class of 2035!” Inside, some students check out relics from 95 years back, such as a long radiation detector nicknamed “Snoopy,” lead-lined glove boxes for handling radioactive material, a soundproofed phone booth with numbers still scrawled in pencil. Others read posters telling stories of people who worked on the Hanford site in World War II or the Cold War.

The entire back wall flickers to life in a giant video, beginning with a wide view of the building at the entrance to the Manhattan … » More …

Trout Culture cover
Spring 2016

Trout Culture: How Fly Fishing Forever Changed the Rocky Mountain West

Trout Culture cover

Jen Corrinne Brown ’12 PhD

University of Washington Press: 2015

With help from Hollywood and even popular beer labels, the Rocky Mountain region of the American West enjoys an iconic reputation for wild and natural fishing. It’s where rugged individualists reconnect with nature through timeless traditions.

Missing from the customary narrative are the generations of human intervention, environmental manipulation, and social transformation.

Brown, who earned a history doctorate from WSU in 2012, calls … » More …

Jonathan apple - NW apples thumb
Winter 2015

Gallery: Old-time Apple Varieties in the Northwest

Trees of the classic apple varieties that were planted in early Pacific Northwest orchards from about 1860 to 1920 can still occasionally be found in overgrown farmyards, pastures, and even in suburban backyards where orchard sites were converted to residential areas and the old trees were left in place. This list of old varieties likely to be found in the Pacific Northwest was compiled by R.A. Norton from nursery lists in the Encyclopedia of Practical Horticulture (1914), edited by Grenville Lowther.

Source: WSU Mount Vernon Northwestern Washington Research and Extension Center. Images from the USDA Pomological Watercolor Collection

Still Searching for Amelia thumb
Winter 2015

Still searching for Amelia

A Mount Vernon high school teacher gets pulled into one of the greatest mysteries of the twentieth century

Dick Spink ’85 never intended to hunt for Amelia Earhart’s airplane. He specializes in boats.

He put himself through Washington State University designing and fabricating aluminum boats. He now holds on to a day job teaching at Mount Vernon High School, but he’s also a naval architect and licensed master. He sells boat kits all over the world, from Singapore to Africa, and often builds clients’ boats on site. Which is how he found himself in the north Pacific, in the Marshall Islands, and deep into … » More …

Ozette cover
Winter 2015

Ozette: Excavating a Makah Whaling Village

Ozette cover

Ruth Kirk

University of Washington Press: 2015

Although the professional literature is rich and extensive, not enough had been written for the public on the extraordinary archaeological exploration at Ozette, the ancient whaling village on the Olympic coast between Neah Bay and La Push. There is Hunters of the Whale, by Northwest chronicler Ruth Kirk, written for young readers in 1974 when the expedition was barely half finished. Archaeology in Washington, coauthored by Kirk and WSU … » More …

Book - Briefly Noted
Winter 2015

Briefly noted

 

A Formative Decade: Ireland in the 1920s

Edited by Jason Knirck ’96 MA, ’00 PhD, Mel Farrell, and Ciara Meehan

Irish Academic Press: 2015

Knirck, a history professor at Central Washington University, and his fellow editors and contributors chronicle the events in Irish history during the ’20s, when Ireland underwent transformations in national identity and allegiances. Knirck’s contribution examines the role of the loyal opposition, the Irish Farmers’ Party.

 

Zen and the Art of Dog Walking

By G. Ray Sullivan Jr. ’73

Deeds Publishing: 2015

Sullivan authored this collection of photographs and musings as a simple descriptive journey of how he discovered natural … » More …

Carl Maxey (Courtesy Gonzaga University)
Winter 2015

Black Spokane

Dwayne Mack was, to say the least, skeptical when his faculty mentor at Washington State University, LeRoy Ashby, suggested he write his doctoral dissertation on Spokane’s black history.

“I thought to myself, ‘Wow, every time we pay a visit to Spokane, we rarely even see black people,’” recalls Mack, who was brought up in Brooklyn and received his master’s degree from a historically black college, North Carolina Central University. “There couldn’t be enough black people to do a study.”

Then he started researching Spokane’s African-American history and realized he had “struck gold.” Spokane’s African-American community was small—historically averaging between 1 and 2 percent of Spokane’s … » More …

The Pacific War and Contingent Victory
Fall 2015

The Pacific War and Contingent Victory: Why Japanese Defeat Was Not Inevitable

The Pacific War and Contingent VictoryMichael W. Myers

University Press of Kansas: 2015

Conventional wisdom among scholars of World War II claims that Japan would inevitably lose the Pacific War to the United States and the Allies. They base that belief on greater American military and economic power and a U.S. strategy that forced the war against Japan on a path to unstoppable Allied victory. Myers, a professor at Washington State University’s School of Politics, Philosophy, and Public … » More …